We need to pause the Syrian refugee program

Washington, DC - French President Francois Hollande declared war on ISIS in the wake of the Islamist terrorist attacks in Paris that left some 129 innocent people dead. President Obama declared war on the Republican Party.

"Our president was dismayed at the widespread lack of support for the hasty implementation of his plan to allow 10,000 refugees from Syria into the country. So he unashamedly pinned the blame on Republican rhetoric. He went so far as to accuse the GOP of aiding and abetting ISIS, calling his conservative critics the enemy's most 'potent recruitment tool' because they seek to stall the president's refugee resettlement plan out of an abundance of caution," according to Dan Weber, president of the Association of Mature American Citizens.

Weber said it is important to stress that any such plan must include a means of ensuring that terrorist infiltrators cannot get into the country along with those who are legitimately seeking asylum. And right now, that appears to be a daunting task, at best.

As FBI Director James Comey told the House Homeland Security Committee recently: "We can only query against that which we have collected. And so if someone has never made a ripple in the pond in Syria in a way that would get their identity or their interest reflected in our database, we can query our database until the cows come home, but there will be nothing that will show up because we have no record of them."

Meanwhile, it has been revealed that at least one of the Paris killers got into France posing as a refugee fleeing the war in Syria. And this week Turkish authorities arrested eight men on suspicion of being Islamic militants calling themselves refugees. On top of that, ISIS brags openly that it is using the refugee migration as a means of smuggling fighters into Europe and beyond.

The Islamic terrorists have repeatedly declared the U.S. to be their number one target, Weber noted. "Was the massacre in Paris a rehearsal for what is in store for America? We are a country that has always welcomed immigrants and there are none more worthy of access here than those escaping the horrors of war. But, with so much evidence that the relocation of Syrian refugees en masse to the safety of the United States will make us all, refugees and citizens alike, less safe, our number one priority needs to be security considerations."

The president has called for compassion for the Syrians who want to enter the U.S. "We call on President Obama to show his compassion for the casualties of war in France and for the potential casualties of that same war in this country. We call on him to make a concerted effort not to politicize the issue in order to prove that he is right and everyone else is wrong," Weber said.

America has always relied on the vast Atlantic Pacific oceans to keep us safe from our enemies, but this time things are different, he added. "We are giving our foes an alternative means of putting their boots on the ground to perform insidious war crimes anywhere and anytime right here in the U.S. The least we can do is to make sure we are aware of the terrible risks we take by allowing the potential for another 911. We need to pause the Syrian refugee program. We need to find and implement an effective means of vetting those who we let into the country. We must remember that ISIS is at war with us even if we hesitate to declare war on them."